Invented Forms Patterned After Works of American Poets

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American Verse
Invented Forms

The Bryant describes observations of nature as metaphor for the social and political world around us. This stanzaic projacked form is patterned after To A Water Foul by American poet, William Cullen Bryant 1794- 1878. It was found in Viola Berg's Pathways for the Poet 1977. The elements of the Bryant are:

1. stanzaic, written in any # of quatrains
2. metered, L1,L4 trimeter and L2,L3 are pentameter. Short lines are indented.
3. rhymed, alternating rhymed quatrains, abab cdcd etc
4. a pastoral metaphor

   A Water Foul by William Cullen Bryant                                  Whither, 'midst falling dew,  While glow the heavens with the last steps of day, Far, through their rosy depths, dost thou pursue Thy solitary way? Vainly the fowler's eye Might mark thy distant flight to do thee wrong, As, darkly painted on the crimson sky, Thy figure floats along. Seek'st thou the plashy brink Of weedy lake, or marge of river wide, Or where the rocking billows rise and sink On the chafed ocean side? There is a Power whose care Teaches thy way along that pathless coast,-- The desert and illimitable air,-- Lone wandering, but not lost. All day thy wings have fanned At that far height, the cold thin atmosphere: Yet stoop not, weary, to the welcome land, Though the dark night is near. And soon that toil shall end, Soon shalt thou find a summer home, and rest, And scream among thy fellows; reeds shall bend Soon o'er thy sheltered nest. Thou'rt gone, the abyss of heaven Hath swallowed up thy form; yet, on my heart Deeply hath sunk the lesson thou hast given, And shall not soon depart. He, who, from zone to zone, Guides through the boundless sky thy certain flight, In the long way that I must tread alone, Will lead my steps aright.

   Nursery by Judi Van Gorder The hornet builds its nest with honeycomb precision, spit in turn is woven into cells, a silken breast to suckle, birth discerned.

The Taylor is a projacked form also found in Berg's Pathways For the Poet, patterned from Upon a Spider Catching a Fly by Edward Taylor (1642-1729) who some call the finest colonial poet although his work was not published until 1939. A puritan poet, his poems are lyrical and yet reflect a staunch Calvanist tone.  The elements of the Taylor are:

1. stanzaic, written in any number of cinquains.
2. metric, iambic, L1 trimeter, L2 and L4 dimeter, L3 tetrameter, L5 monometer.
3. rhymed or at least near rhymed ababb cdcdd efeff etc.

   Justice Undone by Judi Van Gorder
   
   Upon a Spider Catching a Fly  by Edward Taylor

   Thou sorrow, venom elf.
   Is this thy play,
   To spin a web out of thyself
   To catch a fly?
   For why?
   
   I saw a pettish wasp
   Fall foul therein,
   Whom yet thy whorl pins did not clasp
   Lest he should fling
   His sting.

   But as afraid, remote
   Didst stand here at
   And with thy little fingers stroke
   And gently tap
   His back.

   Thus gently him didst treat
   Lest he should pet,
   And in a froppish waspish heat
   Should greatly fret
   Thy net.
   
   Whereas the silly fly,
   Caught by its leg,
   Thou by the throat took'st hastily
   And 'hind the head
   Bite dead.
   
   This goes to pot, that not
   Nature doth call.
   Strive not above what strength hath got
   Lest in the brawl
   Thou fall.
   
   This fray seems thus to us:
   Hell's spider gets
   His entrails spun to whipcords' thus,
   And wove to nets
   And sets,
   
   To tangle Adam's race
   In's stratagems
   To their destructions, spoiled, made base
   By venom things,
   Damned sins.
   
   But mighty, gracious Lord,
   Communicate
   Thy grace to break the cord; afford
   Us glory's gate
   And state.
   
   We'll Nightingale sing like,
   When perched on high
   In glory's cage, Thy glory, bright,
   And thankfully,
   For joy.

Word Sonnet Technically this invented form would not qualify as a true sonnet because it is simply 1 word per line, no meter, no pivot.  But it does employ three distinct features of the sonnet.  It is 14 lines long, rooted in contemplative meditation and initially was rhymed using either the Shakespearean or Italian Sonnet rhyme schemes.  The history of the form is an example of how poetic form evolves.   From it's roots of single monosyllabic, rhymed words using the Shakespearean Sonnet rhyme scheme in America, and around the same time using the Italian Sonnet rhyme scheme in France, to eliminating rhyme all together and finally evolving to triple and quintuple words with no stanzaic groupings and whatever other variations poets could dream of in between.

According to an article, Forplay: An Anthology of Word Sonnets by Seymour Mayne and Christal Steck, the Word Sonnet employing the Shakespearean Sonnet rhyme scheme was first introduced by an American poet Brad Leithauser in 1985, Post-Coitum Tristesse and later included in his anthology of New Formalist poetry, Rebel Angels. Around the same time as the anthology publication in the US, French poet, René Nelli, published his own "Word Sonnets" in  Sonnets Monosyllabiques using the Italian Sonnet rhyme scheme.

However you want to create the image, a 14 line poem using only 1 word per line is similar to haiku. 

The elements of the Word Sonnet are:

1. lyrical, inspired by reflective or contemplative meditation
2. a poem in 14 lines.  
3. single word lines, initially, monosyllabic words were used but the syllable count is at the discretion of the poet. Variations have used 3 word lines and 5 word lines but personally with that many words, you defeat the focus of the single word usage.
4. initially rhymed, either abba cddc effe gg or ababcdcd efgefg.   More often now,  unrhymed.
   
   Solitary
   
   Write
   chose
   white
   rose.
   
   Ink
   penned
   pink
   end.
   
   One
   traced
   scroll.
   Lone
   graced
   soul.
        ~~jvg